When I first went to the West Coast for University I often went to the SCCA road races at nearby circuits. One of the winningest cars of the day was a Lister built by Brian Lister in Cambridge UK. They were built with Jaguar XK D-Type engines but were also sold without the engine for those that wished to fit a 283ci Chevrolet V8.

My car, in particular, was one of these and was sold by Carroll Shelby Sports Cars in Dallas Texas to none-other than Jim Hall of Midland Texas who a few years later built the first Chaparral sports car and the rest is history.

Hall installed a Chevy and campaigned it in the Southwest and in some Professional races. At one point he added a supercharger to gain more performance. The car wasn’t very successful mainly because the Chevrolet engines of the day hadn’t had sufficient development to make them reliable.

The car passed through various owners until it was purchased by a friend, Mike Blackie in Sacramento. He raced it in Historics for some years with moderate success. I was at a historic meeting at Laguna Seca and he mentioned that he wanted to sell it to buy another car. For once in my life I had some extra money and as I had always wanted a really fast Historic racing car I made a deal on the spot to buy it.

I did a race the next day and finished 3rd. The car really needed sorting and wasn’t very nice to drive. I had my shippers collect the car and ship it to the UK and there I commenced a full rebuild to fix all the problems that I had noticed during my race at Laguna Seca.

I had a really good engine builder in Oakland Calif, Karren Gallant. She lived and breathed Chevies so I asked her to build me a new engine to correct period specification. Four months later it arrived in the UK and I fitted it to the freshly restored chassis. From the first test, it was apparent that this was a car that I really liked. It had lots of power and wonderful road holding and handling. It was now obvious to me why Lister had such great success in a period.

 

 

I had to return to the States for business and missed the first race. The next one was the Mike Hawthorn Trophy at Silverstone put on by the VSCC (Vintage Sports Car Club). I entered the car even though I knew it would be tight on the timing to get back in time to make the race.

I arrived the night before and without much sleep arrived at Silverstone just in time to make practice. I qualified 4th fastest. These races were really fierce competitions with many professional drivers hired by the owners. I received a lot of compliments for the car. It looked really great.

Before the start, I was talking to Frank Sytner who had qualified the JCB long nose Jaguar D-Type on the pole. He was the winningest driver with a superbly prepared car that was owned by Anthony Bamford the owner of JCB, a company like Caterpillar. I was taking some No-dose tablets full of caffeine to stay awake. Frank asked what they were.

At the start of the race, I made a fantastic getaway. The torque of the Chevy was awesome. I rocketed into second place behind the D-Type and for the next 3 laps, it stayed like this. I was putting a lot of pressure on Frank and he was feeling it on the next lap we had a braking duel into Club turn and he locked his wheels up and spun the car. I was through and on my way to the Mike Hawthorn Trophy…. A really sweet success!

After the race, Frank came over and asked again what tablets was I took before the race and I told him SPEED!!! He really thought I had taken something special!!
I had many successes with this car and really enjoyed it. As a result, I also became good friends with Brian Lister, a very interesting man, who amongst other things was a consummate Jazz musician and plays the saxophone.

Prior to his death, in December 2014, he started a new project, with the goal of manufacturing a small “continuation” series of the Lister, Jaguar Knobbly from 1958, with a Jaguar or Chevrolet V8 engine. He was a truly resourceful and active man up until he was eighty-eight.